


Safeguard

by i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole



Series: 30 Day Dark!Fandom OTP Challenge [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Possibly Pre-Slash, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Slash, Protective Bucky Barnes, implications of potential noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:31:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole/pseuds/i_am_a_mole_and_i_live_in_a_hole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's tough to always be happy about having to keep a protective eye on someone. Written for Prompt #21 of the Dark Fandom Challenge: Negative Emotions (A).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safeguard

**Author's Note:**

> There is no nonconsensual sex that takes place in this story--nor is any explicitly threatened. To tell the truth, I might be over-warning with the rape/noncon tag; but then again, I might not. In situations like the one that comes up--walking around in a bad part of town, getting weird looks from guys who prooooobably aren't going to do anything but then again if you meet even one that will you're in a hell of a lot of trouble--it can be hard to tell. And the situation is ambiguous enough that I think one could read it as Bucky being a touch over-protective--or kinda classist--or just having an unacknowledged attraction and something of a tendency towards being territorial. But regardless, since there is that element of anxiety and implicit threat associated with that type of situation, and since at least one person has told me I have the tendency to under-warn, I chose to round up and use the warning.

          The alleys down by the half-abandoned factory quarter were a bad place for a kid that looked like Steve Rogers. The soot-stained bricks and broken windows coated with fine layers of slime and grit made the place stink of rough-edged desperation. More than a few houses had panels torn off of their siding—looted during the winter for firewood, perhaps, by the men that still lived in the nearby Hooverville, unemployable for reasons that had nothing to do with the hard times—covered over with faded flour sacks and old newspaper where the inhabitants were unable to afford the repairs. Those men who somehow still managed to be idle despite the war lurked in corners between the houses, drinking bootlegged whiskey and staring out at passerby with red, rheumy eyes, occasionally calling out when some dame’s walking figure caught their eye.

          _Angel-face. Hey, angel-face. C’mere._ _Let’s see a smile on you._

          There were others as well, especially after the evening shadows began to grow deep—groups of men wearing pinstriped suits, who answered the polite nods of the unwitting with hostile stares; and around the darkened storefronts of Linsley Close, near the dockyards, other men, whose eyes would _linger_. Most wouldn’t even notice it, but if you knew what to look for—a glance that flicked downwards and back up, and a brief, hard stare—there was a ritual. Meet that stare, give the smallest upward jerk of the chin, and follow—or be followed by—your newest partner into some darkened alleyway. Come back out after about five minutes, go your separate ways. Never speak to your partner again.

          It wasn’t safe, of course. Catch the wrong pair of eyes, and you could wind up dead. But it was a risk Bucky had gotten used to taking, and he had reasonable confidence in his ability to handle himself.

          He was less confident when it came to Steve.

          Skinny and asthmatic, with neatly cut blonde hair and the sickly look of a lame colt too close to death to waste a bullet on, Steve Rogers did not give off the impression of being able to hold his own in a fight. Nor was he even managing to throw up an air of knowing where he _was_ as he wandered down the street, showing no reaction to the eyes that followed him, blue eyes darting from the street signs to a piece of paper he held in his hand. He clearly hadn’t caught sight of _Bucky,_ who was lounging with his legs slightly apart on the low stone wall between a boarded-up store whose faded sign still proclaimed ‘ ** _GIVE_** Your Home a **_REAL_** Radio—Philco’ and another one which was closed up but seemingly still in business, whose sign simply read ‘Wanabaker’s Bakery and Patisserie’.

          At least one of the guys sitting on the stoop of the crumbling multi-level across the street, though, had caught sight of Steve. Clad in the denim overalls worn by a few of the boys from the meatpacking plant who worked at the jobs most likely to get them dirty, shoveling sewage and cleaning up spills, the man’s eyes hadn’t left the scrawny kid from Brooklyn since he’d passed the burned-out old butcher shop coming up the street. He swiped one thumb over his mouth and adjusted his cap, his eyes hard. He was giving Steve the _look—_ gaze lingering over the thin frame, the bumps made by skinny shoulders in an oversized coat. The man’s own arms were huge—consisting of pure muscle that flexed and rippled beneath his skin, biceps bigger in circumference than some men’s heads, tanned a deep brown from working in the sun except in the places where white scars marked his flesh. His hair was untrimmed, damp with sweat, his eyes hungry and roving, and there was something about the way he looked at Steve—this lost and nervous kid, maybe half his size or less—that put Bucky ill at ease.

          He watched the man out of the corner of his eye. Then he swung his legs off the wall when the other began to stand, jogging the few steps to catch up with Steve before the other man could flag him down. “Hey!”

          “Bucky?” Steve turned to him, eyes widening. “Didn’t think I was going to see you here.”

          “Could’ve said the same thing to you. Lost?”

          “Yeah.” Steve— _the kid_ —his friend, held up the scrap of paper. “I’ve got some cousins that used to live around here, at this address…” and Steve rolled his shoulders, looking sheepish. “I thought I’d see if they’re still around here, but, um, I’m not good at navigating, apparently.”

          “Ah—no.”

          He could still see the man standing, leaning against the wall of the old tenement now, arms crossed over the front of his stained overalls, watching them from under the brim of his cap with squinting eyes. Bucky met his gaze, staring hard, and the man looked away.

          _Good._

          Steve was laughing, good-natured as always, and rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, sorry, I’m hopeless.”

          “Only a little bit. But here, I think I know where this is—there’s one street that stops and then starts again, that’s probably what messed you up. I’ll walk you there.”

          “You don’t have to.”

          _Yes, I do._ “I don’t mind.”

          He would never have admitted it, but the truth was that he did—just a little, just enough to make him feel guilty as hell at the little stab of disappointment that came too quick for him to stop it at being deprived yet _again_ of his time off, and this time of the _one_ chance he would have for the foreseeable future to—

          Oh, that was _rich._ Bucky snatched hold of that thought, crumpling and shoving it deep into his pocket where the laundry would hopefully reduce it to an unrecognizable mass of metaphoric paper pulp. _Don’t even think it, Buck. Don’t you dare._

          He needed to take care of Steve.

          That kid was the most genuinely good guy he’d _ever_ met—the living, breathing embodiment of all those values that everyone paid lip service to but which _no-one_ actually possessed. No-one. Except for this _one damn kid_ : this weak, skinny, asthmatic kid from Brooklyn who could barely make it through ten push-ups without collapsing, who wandered by himself into the most dangerous neighborhood in Lehigh because he got lost while trying to find his cousins’ house.

          It was the way of the world, he supposed—that was how his granny had put it, at any rate, in a voice filled with such a perfectly Catholic blend of kindness and resignation that his knock-kneed younger self would never have been able to question it. True goodness was anathema to this world, she’d said. Keep an eye around you, boy, you’ll see it’s true—the world finds ways to kill everything that starts to smell too much like it might really be _caritas_. But don’t you let that get you down, boy. You keep trying to cultivate that goodness in yourself, and if you ever find it in someone else, you hang onto it, you understand? You keep that flame safe. You protect it with everything you got.

          Do not let goodness die.

          _Well, gran, I sure did turn out to be a real pill, didn’t I? But I think I might’ve found that goodness you were always talking about. And you were right, I think the world_ is _trying to kill him—don’t even know how he got Recruiting to let him in with all the medical problems he has—and otherwise I think he’s going to find a way to get_ himself _killed with all that fool courage he has—but I’ll take care of him. I promise._

          “If you’re sure?” Steve asked him.

          “Oh, yeah.” Bucky only had to half-push the grin onto his face, clapping the kid— _his_ _friend—_ on the back. “Not like I was planning on doing anything else worthwhile today.”

          _To tell you the truth, gran, I’m not doing this for you. You’ve probably got enough to do up in Heaven as it is, making sure all the angels have their socks on right. Nah, gran, this one’s for me—well, for me, and for all of us. These are bad times, gran, and there’s an awful lot of us kids down here getting ready to do some real bad things. You always said that the mark of a real saint wasn’t so much about following the rules as it was about looking into the face of the evil that lies inside us all and having the strength to choose goodness anyway. And Steve—I think the boys at the canteen would laugh if I said it, but I don’t think you would. I think he’s got what you would call a gift, gran. He knows what people are like—can talk to a guy for all of three minutes and come away knowing exactly what’s in that man’s heart. And he still believes in Truth and Justice and Doing What’s Right._

_We need him, gran._ I _need him. And by God, if it takes everything that I have and everything that I am, I will not let us lose him._

          … _So there,_ he added, taking a childish swipe at the part of his brain that thought of all the times he’d _(had to)_ given up the few free evenings and days he had to sit with Steve in the infirmary and grumbled in remembrance and anticipation of more. He would crush that part of his brain by sheer force if he had to; it would not hinder him in doing what he needed to do for his friend, the best man he had ever known.

*

          Then Steve became Captain America less than three months later, and the transformation was nothing less than miraculous.

          Bucky… he congratulated Steve, of course, but he also found himself breathing a sigh of relief. And contrary to what the less informed might have thought—it wasn’t the _physical_ transformation that made him go suddenly weak-kneed and dry in the mouth when his friend walked into the room—mostly. More than that, it was something a bit deeper. Suddenly, Steve had become the kind of guy that was strong enough to lift _Bucky_ up when he fell, and could more than pull his own weight in a fight. He landed solid punches when they sparred that knocked Bucky on his ass, and Bucky—Bucky had to _work_ to land hits on him, and he grinned as he struggled to break Steve’s holds and found himself thrown to the floor, because—well—it wasn’t that he had _minded,_ but—

          It was kind of nice that Steve didn’t need to be looked after anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr as mari-the-mole or happygutters (nsfw).


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